The Girl and the Ghost, by Hanna Alkaf

The Girl and the Ghost, by Hanna Alkaf (middle grade, Harper Collins, August 2020), was on my radar for ages, but this year I've been having a hard time reading (mindless computer game playing dulls my sense more than reading provides an escape), and it took reading for the Cybils Awards for me to get to it (this incentivizing is one reason I like being a Cybils panelist so much). Once I started reading it, it replaced my feelings of nebulous dread and depression with other feelings, lots of them.....(in a good way!), and transported me on a spooky trip to Malaysia.

Here's the first line--“The ghost knew his master was about to die, and he wasn’t exactly unhappy about it.” The witch's blood, which once filled this spirit, a pelesit, with magic, has grown thin, and though he didn't have any ethical qualms about carrying out the malicious errands she used to send him on, he is read for a change. And so when she dies, he sets out to find his new master, who must be someone of the same bloodline, with the same magic within them. That someone is the witch's baby granddaughter, Suraya.

When Suraya becomes aware of the pelesit, she welcomes his friendship, and names him Pink, the sort of name her stuffed animals have. Her mother is cold and distant, and Suraya is a lonely child, and so Pink becomes her inseparable companion as she grows up. Pink, though he's a spirit made for nasty mischief, grows to love Suraya, and would do anything to keep her safe and happy. But when Suraya makes friends with another girl, Jing, and finds happiness outside of Pink, he is consumed by angry jealousy. And since a pelesit has no moral compass, he persecutes Jing. Though Suraya then shuts Pink out of her life, she can't cut all ties with him--they are bound by blood. Finally in desperation she turns to her mother for help, and her mother, for pretty much the first time ever, is there for her.

But when her mother brings in a pawing hantu, a man who can capture spirits, Suraya can't go through with consigning Pink to his custody. And her instincts are sound in this--he is not collecting spirits for altruistic reasons. Suraya and Jing, and Pink, agree to find their way back to the place where Pink was created by the witch, and lay him to peaceful rest. The pawing hantu pursues them, with his own small army of spirits, and in the cemetery where Pink was made, things almost go horribly wrong before all is set right....

My heart ached for Suraya so much. This is a powerful exploration of loneliness and friendship, and though Pink and Suraya's relationship is toxic in many ways, and Pink's jealousy almost spoils it entirely, there is still genuine love between them. Likewise, though Suraya and her mother have a terrible relationship, there's still enough of a bond between them that there's hope they will move forward with love. And Jing is simply a great friend, with nothing toxic about her at all!

People and places, ghosts and graveyards, all become vividly real. It's not a comfort read, but it is a gripping and immersive one, and middle school kids, with all the angst of that age group, will find much to relate too.

On These Magic Shores, by Yamile Saied Méndez

On These Magic Shores, by Yamile Saied Méndez (middle grade, Tu Books, June 2020), blends real world problems and fairy magic to create a compelling story of a 12-year-old girl doing the best she can to keep her family together.

Minerva (in her mind, and at school she's Minnie) might be in 7th grade, but she has her long range plan in place--get the part of Wendy in the school's yearly production of Peter Pan, use that as a springboard to leadership at school, and from there on up to becoming the first Latina president of the United States. In the short-term, her primary responsibility is looking after her two little sisters while their mother, an Argentinian American, works two jobs. Money is tight, and their basement apartment is unlovely, but the family is managing.

Then the night before Minnie's audition, Mamá doesn't come home, and Minnie is overwhelmed by worry for her, and for herself and her sisters. Will the girls be sent to separate foster homes? Minnie can't leave her much younger sisters home alone, but she can't stand to miss the audition. So she brings her sisters, and it goes badly.

Then comes a week of trying to pretend everything is normal, though Minnie has a hard job of it--a 12- year-old can't go to school and look after kids at the same time, and without Mamá, what will they eat? And how can Minnie come up with the $50 audition fee for the play? (aside--do public schools really charge that much for kids to be in the play? This surprised me lots).

But Minnie and her sisters aren't exactly alone. Their mother has filled their ears from babyhood with stories of the fairies who came first from Europe to Argentina, and then from Argentina to the United States. Her little sisters believe, and insist on leaving saucers of milk for them. Minnie's a skeptic. But when little bits of glittery luck start coming her way, the evidence becomes undeniable that there's magic at work.

And with the help from magic, and with a new friend, a quirky kid named Maverick and his wealthy family, and with some help from their landlord, who is kinder than Minnie had thought, things are held together. But Mamá is still missing, and Minnie decides to take action, contacting the grandmother in Argentina she's never met. The grandmother had had a premonition she'd be needed (possibly thanks to the magic), and is able to come to the US. And Mamá comes home from the hospital.

With huge relief, Minnie is able to shed her responsibilities, and her Mamá, still gravely ill, is able to as well, now her own mother is there. And Minnie now believes in fairies just as much as her little sisters do.

In the meantime, there's the play--Minnie isn't cast as Wendy, but as Tiger Lily (because of her brown skin, she wonders?) and she puts her foot down about the racism of the story, refusing to take the part. She's able to convince the school to tweak the play, finds another girl, a newly arrived immigrant, to take the part of Lily, a leader of Amazons. There are many other bits that speak to the experience of being a browned skinned, Spanish-speaking, child of immigrants in the story, including a nasty run-in with a racially profiling cop, that make the story relevant to the real world.

This is a great one for readers who are fascinated by stories of kids coping on their own without grownups! It's believable and scary, but the magic of the fairies leavens the darkness with its subtle sprinkles of gold, and the ending is warm and comforting. Because the magic is so subtle, this is also a great one for the fan of realistic fiction who has to read a fantasy book for school!

I personally enjoyed it lots, though I wasn't certain at first; Minnie starts of as a rather unsympathetic character, but as the story unfolds she grew on me lots. And I loved the magic, and didn't even mind that there was no big reveal of fairies (it stays subtle, but undeniable, till the end).  I hadn't heard about this one until it was nominated for the Cybils Awards, and I'm glad it was so that I was compelled to read it!

Thirteens, by Kate Alice Marshall

I just read Thirteens, by Kate Alice Marshall (Viking, August 2020), in a one and a half hour single sitting (more or less); it was a lovely spooky mystery!  Because I'm going to have to spoil things in writing about the book (although the official blurb spoils everything) , I'll just quickly note that it's a good one if you like to read about kids in supernatural peril (of the bad bargain with fey folk kind), who find the clues to save themselves in old fairy tales and the town archives, and who have each other's backs beautifully, you'll like it lots!  

Elle has come to the idyllic little town of Eden Eld in Oregon, where she was born, to live with her aunt and uncle, after her house burned and her mother disappeared.  She is sad and scared to start with, determined to be Normal, to just get through each day. Normal is hard, though, when Elle begins seeing impossible, disturbing, even terrifying things, like a fearsome black dog with red eyes that no one else seems to see. Then she finds two kids at her school, Pip and Otto, who click with her and become friends before she can over-think it--and they can see these same very wrong things too.  They also share her birthday--all three will turn 13 on Halloween, a week away.  And they very quickly start figuring out that they aren't going to get festivities and parties.  Instead, they have to figure out how to save themselves from malevolent supernatural forces straight out of the fairy tale book Elle's mom read her over and over when she was little. 

And this is the spoilery part--

The three kids are going to be sacrificed in order for the town to prosper.  Ever since the town was founded back in the 19th, every thirteen years 3 kids born on Halloween are handed over to a supernatural, very wrong and creepy sort of being  to be taken by them out of our world.  In exchange, money magically flows into the town. And the grownups who are in charge of the town's end of the ritual bargain think it's still a good idea.

Elle, Pip, and Otto don't.  They think it stinks (especially since they are in mortal peril).  But they don't want to just save themselves; they want to make sure that future kids are safe too.

And this is something that I think make this book one that might speak to kids rather powerfully   (although I'm not sure the author in fact had this in mind or if I'm reading too much into it).  The grown-ups have made a horrible bargain.  Their comfortable, prosperous lives come at the expense of the unlucky kids who have no future, and Elle, Pip, and Otto are basically saying ok, Boomer, and not standing for it. (although after writing this, I realized to my horror that the bad grown-ups would be Gen X...like me. Parents sure are getting younger these days!)

I'm glad it was nominated for the Cybils awards, which is why I read it; the cover and the Goodreads synopsis don't suggest at all the strong fairy tale elements of rules and tricks and hidden clues that are central to the story!  I enjoyed it lots, and if you also like bizarre old houses, fairy tales, monstrous giant ash cats who have figured out how to bend the rules of the game, and good friends, do give it a try! 

(Otto is described, and shown on the cover, as brown-skinned, so I'll add this to my diverse fantasy list)

Displacement, by Kiki Hughes, for Timeslip Tuesday

Displacement, by Kiki Hughes (First Second, August 2020), is a stunning graphic novel that tells of a girl travelling back to the internment camp where her Japanese great grandparents and their daughter, her grandmother, were imprisoned during WW II.  

The book opens in 2016, with sixteen-year-old Kiku being dragged around San Francisco by her mom, looking for the house where her family had lived before all people of Japanese descent on the West Coast were rounded-up and incarcerated during WW II.  Standing where the house had once stood, Kiku finds herself inside a sudden fog, and when it clears she's in the audience of a violin concert.  Her own grandmother, Ernestina, is the violinist. 

A second "displacement," as Kiku thinks of them, happens soon after.  This time she finds herself in a nightmarish line of Japanese people, herded along while Caucasian men with guns watch them. Meanwhile, on the tv in their hotel room, Kiku and her mother hear Donald Trump railing against Muslims entering the US.

Home again in Seattle, Kiku displaces once more, and this time she's gone so long in the past she thinks she might never get home again.   As Number 19106, she's one of many shunted first to a temporary internment camp, and then sent to the Utah desert where she spends the next year.  Many things are horrible.  The fear and uncertainty weigh heavily on all the Japanese Americans in the camp, and the living conditions are grim. Kiku find comfort in good freinds, which keeps her going.  And she can hear her grandmother's violin, traveling through the thin walls, though their paths don't cross, and Kiku feels reluctant to force a meeting.

When she finally tries to do so, the fog comes back, and she is home again, in time to see more xenophoic poison on tv. Her experience is too vivid to keep to herself, so she tells her mother, and it turns out she, too, had travelled back to the camp.  And the story wraps up with a bit more time slipping, with her mother, to see Ernestina as a grown-up, and finally closes with real world activism by Kiku and her mother, protesting the new versions of internment camps in Trump's America.

Her mother's theory is that the trauma of the experience has left a generational echo, but the time travel is much more physically real than an echo suggest--Kiku comes back from her second slip with a knee grazed by a fall in the past, and her life in the internment camp, a very real, very lived life, is much more than can be easily dismissed as unreal.  The months she spends in the camp, bored, and frightened, making friends (including one girl who I got the impression might, if things had been otherwise, been more than a friend) might be low on action and adventure, but it's tremendously evocative, and Kiku is a very real and believable teenager.  It was bleak, sad, and scary, but not depressing.

In any event, the time travel is a satisfying mechanism for Kiku, and the reader, to visit a dark piece of American's past.  In my own way of thinking about time travel books, I'd classify this as "time travel as educational experience for character and reader,", but it's also, just as much so, the story of a girl in horrible circumstances, making it though as best she can.  

Even though I'm graphic novel challenged (I have trouble making my eyes move from the words to the pictures when I read them), I had no problem following what was happening even though I wanted to read rather than look!  I was helped, I think, by Kiku's hair being lighter in color than everyone else's (her dad is white); it helped my eyes find her quickly in the pictures without focusing (everyone else looked distinct too, but not as immediately so).

I liked it lots!

Ikenga, by Nnedi Okorafor

Ikenga, by Nnedi Okorafor (Penguin Random House August 2020) is a gripping fantasy set in modern Nigeria.  Anyone who likes stories of real-world kids dealing with extraordinary powers and the extraordinary responsibilities that come with them will love this one!

Nnamdi's father was the chief of police of the town of Kalaria, a man determined to rid the town of the criminals that were basically running the place.  When he is murdered, Nnamdi is sure the most powerful of the criminals, dubbed the Chief of Chiefs, is responsible.  Nnamdi wants justice for his father, but what can a 12 year old boy do?

Then his father's spirit appears to him, and hands him an Ikenga, a small statue full of power.  The Ikenga gives Nnamdi the chance to carry on his father's mission to end the crime wave destroying Kalaria, and  bring down the Chief of Chiefs.  When he is angry, the Ikenga transforms into a giant shadow man of tremendous strength, and the criminals give him many opportunities to be angry.  Soon several are behind bars, but the Man, as the shadow being is known, becomes himself the object of fear--Nnamdi as the Man is violent, and almost kills several criminals.  Nnamdi is horrified by this violence, and by what worse things his alter ego might do, but he has so much anger he doubts his ability to stay in control.

The stress of this situation drives a wedge between him and his best friend, Chioma, but fortunately, when he is honest with her, this heals, and she's able to help him in both confronting criminals, and solving the mystery of who killed his father. 

This is in large part a superhero story (Nnamdi is himself a big fan of comic book heroes, and compares the Man to the Incredible Hulk).  But Nnamdi is not just a superpowered fighter for justice.  He's a grieving and confused kid, struggling to do the right thing, and confronting injustice and corruption as best he can.  As a result, there's lots of emotional heft to the story, alongside the "ka-pow" action and adventure.

It's also a lovely visit to Nigeria, with lots of details about the town and daily life.

nb: Ikenga is eligible for the Cybils Awards, and has not yet been nominated!  (any one can nominate books in a range of childrens/YA categories, including Elementary/Middle Grade speculative fiction, where Ikenga belongs!)

The Magic in Changing Your Stars, by Leah Henderson, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Magic in Changing Your Stars, by Leah Henderson (middle grade, Sterling Children's Books, April 2020) was waiting for me when I came home from work this afternoon; it was a real time- slipper of a book--292 pages slipped down nice and easy in less than three hours.

In 2010, a kid named Ailey desperately wants to be cast as the Scarecrow in his school's production of The Whiz.  He's sure his dance moves and his rap skills will get him the part.  But it all goes horribly wrong, and like a nightmare, he stands on stage and can't remember the words.

But then something worse happens--his grandfather is suddenly hospitalized.  Ailey has a few minutes alone with him, and his grandfather shares his own past disappointment.  He had a chance to get the break of a lifetime dancing for the great Bill "Mr. Bogangles" Robinson back in Harlem in the 1939, but didn't take it because of his own stage fright.  Instead of being a great dancer, he became the owner of a hardware store.  Gramps sends Ailey to find the tap shows Robinson gave him, inside what he calls his box of regrets.  Ailey finds them, tries them on....and finds himself back in time on the street corner where Gramps, then a kid nicknamed Taps. 

Fortunately, Taps is willing to make friends with the weird kid who's shown up wearing tap shoes (and Black Panther pjs, underneath some oversized clothes of the thirties donated by a nice woman with a charity stall).  And Ailey gets to witness his grandfather and Bojangles dancing together for the first time.  His mission is clear--he must help Gramps get up on the stage. But how?

Once he succeeds (this is mg, so the success is not a spoiler) he travels back to his own time.  There he finds that changing his grandfather's fate has changed his own life lots.....and he's able to get a second chance at his own dream of the Scarecrow.

It was a great trip to Harem in the 1930s, full of music and dance.  Any dance kid will love the book for this alone, but there was much more!  The friendship between the two boys, and how they pushed each other past their mutual performance anxiety was not just heartwarming but potentially useful to kids in similar circumstances.  Bits of the future brought back into the past (a Black Panther watch/hologram device) add humor (and help in a tricky situation!).  Both the family in 2010 and in 1939 were warm and supportive, the family in 1939 helping alleviate the anxiety of both  boy and reader (and leaving this reader, at least, wondering what it would be like to spend the evening with my own great grandparents....).  I am left a little worried about how Ailey is going to cope with the changes in his present caused by him having changed the past, but at least all the people are still the same, so he'll probably cope!

Short answer--a really fun time travel, in which the tension of  temporal dislocation is paired beautifully with internal conflict!  

bonus appreciation--Henderson named her characters after famous Black people, and I was tickled to see Sissieretta Jones make an appearance--I work two doors down from her birthplace, and pass her memorial plaque often.

Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, by Fleur Bradley

I'm happy to be part of the blog tour today for Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, by Fleur Bradley, illustrated by Xavier Bonet (middle grade, Viking, August 25 2020).  I'm always up for a good mysterious hotel story, and this one delivers very nicely!

JJ Jacobson is a young ghost hunter, but hasn't yet found any good ghosts to hunt.  So when his mother gets a surprising invitation for a weekend at the famous, and supposedly haunted,  Barclay Hotel.  She's always awfully busy and preoccupied with her peanut butter and jelly business, but he convinces her to go, and to take him with her.

She isn't the only one to get a mysterious invitation; a handful of other guest have been carefully selected as well.  And when they arrive, they find out why--all but one of them is a suspect in the death of the hotel's owner!  And then the snow begins to fall, trapping them....with a murderer.

As well as hunting ghosts, JJ has to hunt for the answers to the mysteries in which his mom has been entangled.  Fortunately there are two other kids at the hotel--Penny (grand-daughter of another guest) and Emma, who lives there.    They join forces, exploring the hotel together, discovering the secrets of the other guests, and hunting for ghosts (because yes, the hotel is haunted!).

The hotel is a fascinating place, and the kids are entertaining company! They make a great team-- Penny (who is black) loves books, and puts that to good use, JJ loves  his ghost hunting, and there's lots of detail about his technology.  Emma knows the hotel, so she's their guide.  There are plenty of twists, and nothing is quite as it seems, making the pages turn quickly.  The solution wasn't what I was expecting at all (though I did guess a few things)!

For kids who like mysteries, ghosts, and weird hotels and playing Clue, this is a perfect book, especially for those on the younger side of middle grade (the 9 and 10 year olds).  And it's lots of fun for everyone else too!

Here are all the other tour stops:

Aug. 3^rd: Book review at Always in the Middle

Aug. 11^th: An interview at MG Bookvillage

Aug. 16^th: Guest post: Fleur talks about reaching reluctant readers at Unleashing Readers

Aug. 17^th: Review at Secret Files of Fairday Morrow blog

Aug. 18^th: Review and giveaway at MG Mojo

Aug. 19th.: Interview and giveaway at From the Mixed-Up Files

Aug. 21^st: Book review at Our Thoughts Precisely.

Aug. 23^rd: Interview and giveaway at Spooky MG

Aug. 24^th: Interview at YA Booknerd

Facebook Live Book Launch on Aug. 25th!

Aug. 25^th: Writer's Digest Author Spotlight

Sept. 4^th : Fleur talks about getting out of your comfort zone on Kirby Larson’s blog

Sept. 8^th: Fleur outlines how to develop a compelling MG concept at Writer's Digest

disclaimer: review copy received, with great pleasure, from the author!

Curse of the Night Witch, by Alex Aster

Curse of the Night Witch (Emblem Island #1), by Alex Aster (Sourcebooks, June 2020), is a single-sitting, very satisfying middle grade (9-12 year olds) fantasy, with the only unsatisfying part being that the second book isn't available right now.

Everyone (or almost everyone) born on Emblem Island has a mark that shows their particular gift, and a lifeline that magically shows the highs and lows to come, and how long that life will be. Twelve-year old Tor isn't happy with his long, boring life line, that promises no excitement, and downright hates his leadership emblem. He doesn't want to be leader, and doesn't want to spend his days studying the dry texts of leadership education. He desperately wishes he had an emblem for water breathing isntead--underwater is where he is happiest.

At the annual New Years celebration, all the islanders throw wishes into the bonfire, and some are granted. Tor's wish is one of those. The next morning he wakes up with his leadership emblem gone...but now there's a curse symbol in its place, and his life line is shortened almost to nothing. Then his best friend Engle, and his not-friend, Melda (the only other leadership marked kid in his village), get contaminated by the curse. Now they too have only a few weeks to live.

The only way to rid themselves of the curse is to find the legendary Night Witch, who haunts the island's stories, gathered together in the Book of Cuentos that the kids take with them. Those stories are their guides to the fearsome dangers of magical creatures and treacherous terrain outside their home village. The island is bigger and more wonderful and horrible than they had dreamt, but they keep going, and learn to trust each other, and the stories. (And they get home safely in the end, with the immediate problem solved, but new dangers and challenges looming--I can't wait for the next book!).

All the things that make middle grade fantasy adventure so much fun to read can be found here. There's wildly extravagant world-building that somehow managed never to tip me out of the story in disbelief, solid friendship between the kids (including the antagonist to friends relationship of Tor and Melda), bravery (bolstered by lots of help from grown-ups along the way, which I appreciated), thought-provoking considerations of destiny, and a much more nuanced final confrontation than I'd been expecting! The stories in the Book of Cuentos are rooted in tales told to Alex Aster by her Columbian grandmother, which makes the book even more appealing.

Personally, something that made this interesting to me is that it's not a portal fantasy, but a fantasy quest carried out by insiders to the magic of their own world. I think this helped make it feel tight and contained, and helped keep the pacing brisk.

I'd recommend it to fans of the  Morrigan Crow series--totally different setting, but a similar playful feel to the magical setting (although possible I'm thinking about Morrigan because she was "cursed" too...but I think it's a good recommendation nevertheless).  It also felt like one for anyone who enjoyed Lalani of the Distant Sea, and basically one for anyone who likes magical monsters and kids with magical gifts!

short answer-- a really strong series start that I enjoyed lots.

Mysterious Messenger, by Gilbert Ford

If you think a treasure hunt in New York City with a ghost providing the clues sounds like fun for you and/or your kids, pick up Mysterious Messenger, written and illustrated by Gilbert Ford (July 2020, middle grade,  Henry Holt) right away!

Maria's life is constrained by her mother's profession as a fake psychic.  "Madame Destine" makes a living conning the gullible out of valuable possessions, and it's Maria's job to hid in a closet and make sound effects during the seances.  Mr. Fox, the apartment superintendent and more than friend to her mother, makes more sounds from the basement.  Maria doesn't go to school, she's not allowed friends, and her mother is manipulative and controlling (and just terrible at providing healthy meals, nurturing, support, etc.).   Maria's only escape is at the public library, and her only friend (a secret from her mother) is a ghost, Eddy, who can communicate by controlling her writing hand.

When Mrs. Fisher, an elderly widow who isn't well off, is conned out of her wedding ring, Eddy takes action.  Apparently there's a treasure hidden in Mrs. Fisher's apartment, and he starts giving Maria clues about how to find it.  The library's her first starting place, and there she meets a boy named Sebastian, who lives in her appartment building.  Though she's forbidden to talk to him, she can't shake him, and when he finds out that she's on a hunt for treasure, he becomes her comrade. Mrs. Fisher becomes a friend to Maria too, and over the next few weeks Eddy's messages bring all three closer, though no closer to the treasure....

But the librarian is concerned about Maria, and gets the neighborhood police officer to look into her living situation.  Madame Destine and Mr. Fox decide it's time to head out of town, but when they discover the treasure hunt, they want a piece of that action, and Maria, Sebastian, and Mrs. Fisher find themselves in danger.

The clues Eddy provides make this a rather unusual treasure hunt, sending the kids delving into the history of the Beat poets, artists, and musicians with whom Mrs. Fisher and her husband were friends  (a visit to the archives of the NY public library, for instance, and to one of the clubs where poets hung out).   This was fascinating to me, and I assume that smart kids, the sort that are used to picking up all sorts of random information online, will appreciate it too.

I did get frustrated that Eddy didn't provide clearer directions to the treasure, but then I (and Maria as well) realized the treasure wasn't everything.  Eddy turns out to have good reasons for wanting Maria to escape her horrible mother and find friends who can help her, and the journey toward the treasure is what makes this happen....that being said, there is a wonderful, bibliophile's dream of a treasure!

There's also a happy ending for Maria, but I was a little grumpy that once she found out who her father was, and found out Madame Destine was only her stepmother, no one made any effort to find her relatives.  Her dad's family is Puerto Rican, and possibly her mother's too, so it would have perhaps been challenging, but not impossible.

But in any event, this one's a winner for kids who enjoy found families, treasure hunts, books, ghosts, and kids with psychic  powers!  I also appreciated the educational side of things, and in fact have more appreciation for Jackson Pollock than I did last week...though I still am not interested in reading the Beat poets.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Thieves of Weirdwood, by Christian McKay Heidicker

If you've read Scary Stories for Young Foxes, by Christian McKay Heidicker (a 2020 Newbery Honor book) you will, perhaps, approach his new middle grade fantasy, Thieves of Weirdwood (written under the name of William Shivering), with both caution and curiosity.  Will this more traditional mg fantasy story be as horrifying and as vividly real? you might ask (or at least, I did), and you will be eager to dive into it to find out (at least, I was, and was not disappointed!)

Wally and Arthur are 12-year-old thieves (as shown on the cover, Wally is black and Arthur white), young members of the Black Feathers gang that terrorizes their city of Kingsport.  All their takings are owed to the gang leader, the Crow, who holds them fast in his fearful talons.  But Wally needs money to cover the hospital costs for his older brother in the city insane asylum, and Arthur needs money to cover his father's debts, so a big heist is needed by both!  

When Arthur finds wealthy strangers making themselves at home in what seemed to be an abandoned mansion, he drags Wally along for a break in.  The two boys find more than they bargained for--the mansion is now the temporary home of Weirdwood Manor, the travelling headquarters of an order dedicated to maintaining the border between the real and the magical words.  The border has weakened in Kingsport, and nightmarish magic is leaking through (nightmare #1--a porcelain doll that sucks the life out of its victims, leaving them china husks).

Wally and Arthur are stunned by the bizarre and fantastical wonders within Weirdwood Manor, and though Arthur makes it out, he leaves Wally behind.  Wally isn't alone, though--he meets a ghost girl, Breeth, who only he can hear, whose spirit can posses anything organic, and who desperately wants his help to revenge herself on her murderer.  Arthur, full of dreams of being a gentleman thief, like the hero of his favorite adventure books, steels himself to go back for Wally....and so the two boys become, for the moment, part of the Weirdwood team.

And it's a team that needs all the help it can.  The instigator of the attacks through the boarder between real and unreal is incredibly powerful, and can shape stories that terrorize Kingsport.  Wally and Arthur must harness their own stories to fight back.  With help from Breeth and her skills of ghostly possession (helped less by her penchant for puns), from the gentleman thief of Arthur's books and his merry skeleton crew, and from the Weirdwood agents (a young dragon boy and a fierce swordswinging girl), they defend their city from deadly nightmares....

So in answer to the question I posed above--yes, there's horror (if you have a strong aversion to tentacles and crows, you might think twice about this one), and yes, it's very vivid indeed (in many place, like bad dreams that stay shockingly real when you wake up).  But it is also a story of full of friendship, and loyalty, and good heartedness, and bravery, and lots of magic that's not always scary!  Wally, Arthur, and Breeth are great characters, perhaps the most memorable I've read about so far this year.  Though Wally is perhaps the more sympathetic of the two boys, Arthur overshadows him a bit; he's more flawed and more flamboyant).  And the story, which seems fairly simple at first, moves from simmer to full on boil with great aplomb!

It ends at an ending, but there's lots of scope for more, and I hope more comes sooner rather than later!

Short answer: a cracking read.  Particularly recommended for mg horror fans who are starting to play D. and D. and reading more traditional fantasy.

(note to those looking for it--the RI library system is shelving this under S for Shivering, even though Heidicker's name is clearly on the cover...I'm not sure how universal this choice of shelving name is....)

Hunted by the Sky, by Tanaz Bhathena

Hunted by the Sky (The Wrath of Ambar #1) by Tanaz Bhathena (June 23rd 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux) has magic, secrets and intrigue, powerful and amoral antagonists, class struggles, gender struggles, nascent romance, and a vivid background based on Vedic and Medival India!

Twenty years ago, vicious King Lohar ascended the throne of Ambar, and his priests prophesied that a magic-wielding girl, marked with a star, would be his downfall.  So of course he began hunting all girls with star-shaped birthmarks, draining their magic, and killing them

Gul was such a girl, born with magic (though not able to do much with it) and with a star-shaped mark on her arm.  When King Lohar's ruthless soldiers get word of her existence, and kill her parents, she barely escapes.  She vows vengeance, but even though her magic becomes focused enough to let her communicate with animals (including a lovely horse!), she has no idea how she'll kill the king.

Then she's taken in by the Sisters of the Golden Lotus, women plotting to overthrow the tyrant.  They train her in warrior magic, and her potential begins to emerge, explosively and powerfully.  But they can't get her into the castle to kill the king....and their leader, being far wiser than a traumatized teenaged girl, knows that killing one specific tyrant won't help in the grand scheme of things...

Cavas is a teenaged boy who works in the king's stables, spending everything he earns on medicine for his father, dying of the illness common in the poverty stricken tenements of the city.  He has no magic, and so the magial elite despise him as a dirt-licker.   He does not love the king (why would he?), but he is not a rebel at heart.  But when his path crosses with Gul in the city's bazaar, sparks fly,  and their lives are twisted together.

Which is to say there's a lot more story about what happens when Cavas gets Gul into the castle.  We get to see lots more of the magic of this world and how it works, secrets about people's identities are revealed, and there's violence and death....

This is where I started really enjoying the story, about halfway through.  Before then, it was fine, but I wasn't hooked--thinking about it, both of the point of view characters aren't really interacting with other people; both are somewhat isolated. And this didn't make it easy to connect with them.  When they connect with each other,  the reader finally gets to see them from another person's eyes, and gets to see them getting to know each other in prickly, difficult circumstances.   The scale of the magical world enlarges, too, once the action moves to the castle.  Details about other nations, magical beings, history and stories, small household magics and bigger ones made Gul and Cavas' personal struggles more meaningful, and the setting more vivid.

There are a lot of books about girls of destiny who become queens (though in this first book of the series we are left in the middle of the story, before she actually becomes queen), and some are better than others.  I see no reason why YA readers of that genre won't love this series; it has all the right elements including a potential love triangle--there's a third character one could certainly ship Gul with instead of Cavas….).  The Indian background of the story, the grappling with how to effect change, and the secrets the two main characters discover about themselves make this one stand out in a somewhat crowded field.

I ended up definitely sold on this, and look forward to the second book, coming next year!

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Equality Girls & the Purple Reflecto-Ray, by Aya de Leon

Equality Girls & the Purple Reflecto-Ray, by Aya de Leon (published by the author, May 2020) is a really fun chapter book full of radical girl power!

Daniela's an ordinary fourth-grader, disappointed that budget cuts means there's no coach for her soccer team.  Then there's a freak accident, involving her dog and her mom's top secret science experiment.   She doesn't think much about it, but when she and her friends ask if they can play soccer with two 7th grade boys, and are met with sexist stereotypes, she becomes furiously angry, and purple beams shoot out from her eyes!

When the boys get hit by them, suddenly they are embodying the very stereotypes they'd taunted the girls with--one tries to use flowers as makeup to make himself pretty, and the other becomes obsessed with  a little cat.  The effect has worn off the next day, and the girls think it's maybe a one time thing, until Daniela gets angry again at the man presenting sexist puppet show at school.  Once more the purple beams flash out, and once more their target starts acting out the stereotype, begging to be saved from the fierce girls!

Now Daniela and her friends know what she can do, they decide to tackle the sexist in chief, the president of the United States, who's coming to town to judge a beauty pageant.  He's not named, but he certainly evokes our current president (here's the back cover, that makes that clear!).  And it's lovely to see him get his comeuppance for his sexism, when he gets zapped and wants to take part in the pageant himself, wearing his own bikini bottoms and proclaiming that he's the loveliest of all.

It might seem heavy handed and didactic, but it's actually a lot of fun, and I chuckled out loud several times (kids will probably find it even more entertaining!)  The sci fi powers are cool, though little effort is made to explain them, and though there's not a lot of page time for characterization, Daniela and her diverse group of friends manage to be believable.   And as well as the more egregious examples of sexism, the girls talk to each other about the issue, in healthy ways, such as this conversation:

“What is beauty anyway?” Malaya asked. The crew walked past a pair of
girls taking pictures, both of them wearing “Miss Tween” T-shirts.
“I think it’s just an idea somebody made up to get girls to worry about
things that don’t really matter,” Daniela said.
“But sometimes I like putting on fancy clothes and enjoying how I look,”
Jalisse said.
“That’s different,” Malaya said. “That’s about enjoying fashion and color
and style. There’s so much creativity in that. You sew a lot of your own clothes.
It’s not about competing with other girls for who some guy thinks is prettiest.” 

So in short, I enjoyed it lots, and if I had a kid 7-9 years old on hand, I'd certainly offer it to them. And I'd certainly enjoy reading more adventures of the four equality girls!

disclaimer: e-arc received from the author's publicist.

"When Life Hands You a Lemon Fruitbomb" by Amerie (from a Phoenix First Must Burn) for Timeslip Tuesday

When I saw this call to Blackout besteller lists with black voices yesterday, a trip to my local bookstore was inevitable.

I checked to see that the two books I knew I wanted to read (The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, by Roseanne A. Brown) were both in stock, and they were, but by the time I reached the bookstore, they weren't anymore. Which is good, I guess, and it meant I had to browse the shelves (which I don't mind), and my eye was caught by A Phoenix First Must Burn: Sixteen Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope, edited by Patrice Caldwell (YA, Viking Books, March 10, 2020), which of course I happily bought.

The very first story, "When Life Hands You a Lemon Fruitbomb" by Amerie, is a time slip story, and so it's the subject of today's post.   But it hurts to spoil it by saying what happens, because it's so good and the twist is lovely.  So I won't go into much detail, and you can just go ahead and buy this lovely anthology yourself if you want to read the story as it should be read!

However, in order to have a post about the time slip-ness of the plot, I have to write about it. So.

It's a story of Earth being invaded by aliens, nicknamed "orcs."  Earth fights back, and two brave black girls are among the humans who travel through a wormhole to push back against the invaders.  They are both serving as interrogators, trying to find information about their enemy that can save earth.  But the wormhole has taken them back in time, and there is no humanity on Earth to save this far back in the past.  There's only a distant plant, and the orcs, and legend the orcs have of something that will come to pass in the future.  And the two girls take the steps that will make that happen.

And, even biggest spoiler, the thing they will make happen is the orcs invasion of Earth, and the trip through the wormhole, each iteration creating an alternate beginning.  (Time travel via sci fi wormhole doesn't happen in YA very often, by which I mean I can't think of another example).

I needed that spoiler to make my main comment--it was such a brilliant placement of this story as the first one in this collection, because of course it leads into all the other fifteen alternate realities full of black girl magic that follow.

It's a great story, as are many of the other 15.  Some I liked more than others, but it's really strong collection, and there were several I loved.  But this one, I think, is my favorite.

(the second book I bought was Kingdom of Souls, by Rena Barron, which I had also been wanting to read!)

Lightning Girl, books 3 and 4, by Alesha Dixon

Aurora Beam is known around the world as Lightning Girl, the latest in a maternal line of superheros, and her adventures continue in Secret Supervillain, and Superpower Showdown (Kane Miller, 2020).  Here's my review of the first two books.

A magical stone work powers of light (and lightning) in Aurora, and now she's gone from being an ordinary kid to a world famous hero.  But being a young hero is tough when supervillains (older, more cunning, and more confident) are out to steal the stone, and three others of equal power, from their guardians.

Her adventures take her around the world as she struggles to foil the evil masterminds trying to claim the powers from themselves.  Small victories are followed by ever greater struggles and intrigues, and though Aurora can shoot lightning from her hands, she is really no match for her enemies; her sympathetic heart and lack of cunning make her rather easily manipulated by super-smart villains!  Fortunately, she has good allies--her secret agent magical grandma, her morally dubious aunt, who comes with an ostrich who has no morals at all (but who is a great help when riled up!) and friends, both ordinary and superpowered.  And also she has a growing confidence in not just her powers, but herself, that helps keep her going.

This a great series for kids who enjoy about reading wild adventures of ordinary kids thrown in to extraordinary adventures.  There's plenty of humor (although I myself find the antics of the ostrich appalling rather than funny...), plenty of relatable middle grade self-reflection, and warm family and friend relationships. The world of the books keeping getting bigger, with the Queen of England, for instance, getting involved in story. 

If you're looking for stories of  black girls (Aurora's bi-racial) saving the world, and you're not finding much, do check this series out (as a bonus, you also get her tech genius brother and  science genius little sister).  A satisfying stopping point is reached at the end of the fourth book, but the epilogue sets the stage for further challenges to Lightning Girl!

disclaimer: review copies received from the publisher.

The Way to Rio Luna, by Zoraida Córdova

The Way to Rio Luna, by Zoraida Córdova (Scholastic, June 2 2020), is a new middle grade fantasy (the first mg by this YA author) that will appeal to those who enjoy whimsical, fairytale-flavored adventures.

Danny Monteverde and his sister, Pili, lost their parents when he was a baby, and in the shuffle between foster homes and group homes that was his childhood, he had only two constants--Pili's love, and the fairytales she read to him from their treasured copy of The Way to Rio Luna.  Then when he was nine, Pili wasn't there anymore--run away, the authorities decided.  But Danny believes she is waiting for him in Rio Luna, if only he can find his way there...then his current foster father, who's horrible, destroys the book, and his hopes dwindle.

During a class field trip to the New York library, Danny wanders by himself into a rare book room, and finds one of the rarest books of all, out and open--an original copy of The Way to Rio Luna, from which magical arrows emanate.  He finds a friend, too, a girl named Glory who also believes in magic, encouraged by her eccentric Aunt North scoops both Danny and the book up, and takes them to her home, promising to help Danny follow the arrows to Rio Luna.

Each chapter in the book links our world to the world of Rio Luna, and each holds a key.  Danny, Glory, and Aunt North set out to track them down, travelling from New York, to Ecuador, to Brazil, and finally to Ireland.*   They meet the characters in the stories, Leigh the Bard, who foiled the plans of the Shadow Queen to take over Rio Luna, the legendary guinea big who travelled to the land of shooting stars, and the Kohlrabi King, who's set up a sanctuary for magical beings in Brazil.  They are joined by Llewellyn, a young Jackalope Prince who's squeezed his way into our world, who adds lightly comic notes, while being a stalwart ally.  And they meet the Shadow Queen, who has broken free of her prison, and who wants to use the keys the children have found to return with her army of shadows and resume her conquest.

But Danny, Glory, and Llewellyn persevere, and at last they reach Rio Luna, and Pili, in what is not so much a happy ending as the beginning of a new adventure...

The bonds of family and friendship are front and center, and the appeal of following a path into stories from a beloved a book is always great.  Younger middle grade readers will especially enjoy this diverse, vividly descriptive, story.  It wasn't quite to my own taste; there was too much whimsy for me (by way of context, I didn't really enjoy The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, or Summer In Orcus), and I felt there was not quite enough depth and building of tension to the story of the Shadow Queen, who sort of abruptly erupts into full confrontational villainy towards the end), but I'm sure many readers who aren't me will love it! 

*aside--this sort of travelling is why it's good to have a well-funded and well-connected aunt, who belives in magic, with you on your middle grade adventures in the real world.  Further aside--Danny does have a passport from when he was a baby, but the fact that it would have expired is not an issue, which raised my eyebrows because sometimes I'm a stickler for details like this. 

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Lintang and the Pirate Queen, by Tamara Moss

Lintang and the Pirate Queen, by Tamara Moss (published in the US by Clarion October 2019, originally Random House Australia, 2017), is a fun middle grade fantasy that made a nice change from social distancing, which is something that is impossible on a ship headed out to hunt monsters!

Lintang in many ways is the archetypal mg heroine--the feisty sort who rejects domesticity and gets into trouble as a result.  She longs for adventures in the world outside her island home, dreaming of becoming a slayer of predatory mythies (magical creatures ranging from small annoyances to huge terrors),  just like her idol, Captain Shafira, the so-called "Pirate Queen."  When Shafira actually comes to visit her island (a south Asian-like place), Lintang sees the chance to make her dreams come true--an islander is needed to ensure safe passage from a monstrous mythie who prowls the ocean off the island.

Shafira's crew is an unusual collection of women, and one trans boy; the only thing they have in common is their loyalty to their captain.  But obedience isn't Lintang's strong point.  When she finds that her best friend, a boy named Bayani, has smuggled himself on board in a desperate attempt to reach the empire that controls much of the known world, she keeps him secret, even though he won't explain himself to her.  Shafira is forced to punish Lintang when Bayani is discovered, but when she disobeys again, she finds herself put ashore in the empire along with Bayani.  Shafira supports Bayani's mission once she finds out what it is, but can't risk herself to help him (there's a price on her head).  There in the empire Lintang faces an almost impossibly test of her loyalty to the pirate queen, and passes it.

But that, though it's exciting, isn't the high point of the story. The two kids, back on board, must face an even more dangerous adventure...one that changes Lintang's understanding of the mythies forever...

So on the surface this a story of monster hunting and adventure, and there's plenty of that sort of fun.  But at its heart this is a story of Lintang's growth, and the internal struggles that entails.  She's not really likeable, but she's interesting, and Bayani, the kind, level-headed member of their duo, is a good counter-weight.

The story is also given depth by the geo-political framework of an empire looking to expand, withholding life saving medicine from non-absorbed lands.  And the truth about the mythies is a bombshell both for the characters who've grown up thinking of them primarily as dangerous, or at best annoying, monsters (pages from the Mythie Guidebook interspersed with the story add pleasant interest).

In short, though it's a rollicking adventure that will please any young reader who longs to explore the wide wild world outside their home, it's also a story of friendship, and learning how to choose to be the person you want to be.  I myself not wild about pirates and sea voyages and monster hunting, and wild, disobedient girls having adventures, but even so I enjoyed this plenty.

nb: in a rather nice touch, the transgender boy's gender identity is so real that he, like any other boy, is in danger from the lure of the siren mythies. There aren't many trans characters in middle grade fantasy so it's good to have him included in a matter-of-fact, this is who this person is and it is not remarkable, sort of way.